manufacturing | Industry 4.0 Right: KM
believes its Industry 4.0 E-Service will simplify machine support
to use state-of-the-art communication and data security procedures. Germany-headquartered
KraussMaffei’s Industry 4.0 programme – Plastics 4.0 – is also focused on three areas: intelligent machines, integrated production and interactive services. “This fourth industrial revolution will radically change the working world. For instance by the self-optimisation of intelli- gent machines, and thus achieving stable processes,” says Dr Hans Ulrich Golz, President of the Injection Moulding Machinery division of the KraussMaffei Group. In the first of these areas – intelligent manufacturing – the company offers a newly enhanced version of its APC (Adaptive Process Control) technology. APC plus provides a more specific response to process fluctua- tions caused by changing ambient conditions or machine downtimes, taking into account specific property patterns of 20 basic materials – such as the melt compressibility – and then correcting during the holding-pressure phase. The company’s new DataXplorer fits into the
Developing “Plug and Produce” tools: Michael Wittmann, Wittmann Group
integrated production category and is said to provide a near microscopic view of the moulding process. Depending on the configuration, it can display up to 500 high-resolution signal paths and visualise them for evaluation. “For safety-related components or in medical technology it is important to be able to subsequently retrieve all quality-relevant process data for each individual injection cycle,” says Dr Reinhard
Schematic showing how Wittmann 4.0 makes the injection machine the key point of access
Schiffers, KraussMaffei Head of Machine Technology. The potential for Industry
4.0 connectivity to support enhanced servicing is also being investigated at KraussMaffei Group. During K2016 it demonstrated its development E-Service platform. According to Renato Davatz, CEO at Netstal and Vice President of Service for KraussMaf-
fei’s injection machinery business, E-Service will allow machine owners to access manuals, service information and application videos directly from a personalised dashboard on the machine control panel. “A part finder app on the smartphone or tablet computer will enable reliable identification of the required component using QR codes. Availability and price can be determined in a database, where an order function will also be integrated. A service ticket can also be opened here directly,” he says. The E-Service system is still under development but the company claims to be “working rigorously” towards commercial implementation. Austria’s Wittmann Group takes a slightly different
approach to Industry 4.0 than some of its competitors, focusing on simplicity of operation and security of data in a less open environment. One of the differentiating factors in its Wittmann 4.0 system is that it uses the Wittmann Battenfeld injection moulding machine as the key point of access, which it says allows it to offer an Industry 4.0 solution that is easy to set up while avoiding data security risk. Wittmann Group General Manager Michael Wittmann
says the core of the Wittmann 4.0 system is its internal- ly-developed router. Integrated into the Unilog injection machine control system, the Wittmann 4.0 router acts as a firewall and grants access only to authenticated devices. More importantly for the moulder in day-to-day terms, it fully automates allocation of IP addresses to individual devices, enabling them to be connected, disconnected and reallocated to other production cells at will.
“The Wittmann 4.0 router gives you a ‘Plug-and-
Produce’ capability,” he explains. “It assigns local IP addresses to local equipment, which is a huge advan- tage for the Industry 4.0 work cell administrator. That is important at start-up, but is particularly important in production because production equipment is not static – items of equipment are moved about in the factory.” The router also acts as the gateway to the outside world, which Wittmann says in its Industry 4.0 vision
44 INJECTION WORLD | January/February 2017
www.injectionworld.com
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